Over the past couple of weeks there have been some great debates regarding iOS6, Android, and even Windows Phone 8 (sorry Blackberry) among OnForce Pros on our LinkedIn forum (if you are an OnForce Pro you should sign up).  I thought it would be worth summarizing some of the thoughts as well as sharing my own experience and perspective as a way to broaden the debate.

Overall, Pros seem neutral to negative about the new OS and neutral to positive about the iPhone 5.  Some highlights/problems cited from the discussion regarding iOS6:

• iOS 6 is killing battery life!  Adrian Kingsley-Hughes’s of ZD Net gives his view.
• Passbook seems almost non-functional.  Bev Robb said: “[iPhone 4] It was a train wreck with the Passbook”  Tuaw’s overview of the problem
• Several Pros are choosing to wait to upgrade until there is more stability
• Some reports of wifi connection challenges – ZD Net’s view here
• Split perspectives on Maps.  Here’s Tim Cook’s letter about it.
• Some installation problems
• Some Pros having great experiences and problem free

As for me, I’m still using my iPhone 4 on iOS6, although I’m about to switch to my Galaxy SII for a while.  Have to say that I’m still not clear about whether iOS 6 is an upgrade.  I like the VIPs in mail, but it seems like battery life is reduced.  However, either I am getting used to it or it’s getting better for some hard to understand reason  Initially I felt that I could watch the battery drain (and others have said the same), but now I’m not sure if it’s different from when I was on iOS5.

Also, can’t tell for sure, but it seems to lose wifi connection periodically.  It recovers quickly, but I don’t remember this before iOS 6.  Maps – I haven’t had a problem but I haven’t used it much.  In the end, I think that iOS 6 has pushed my iPhone 4 one notch closer to obsolescence.  I’m not unhappy, but I’m not impressed either.

Yesterday, in a conversation with my neighbor I got the best endorsement for iPhone that I could have.  My neighbor is excited about his Samsung Galaxy Nexus SIII (Could they make their phone names any longer?) and was telling me he thought that this was Apple’s last big release.  I was agreeing with him that it might be true although we had different reasons.  His reasoning was that his SIII was so much faster and far ahead and Apple just wasn’t keeping up.  I was a bit skeptical as he quoted processor speeds and mentioned that I hadn’t seen that the faster processors lead to consistently improved performance… and he proceeded to demo his phone and watch it freeze for a few seconds while scrolling and then come back… then freeze again.  We proceeded to test who could do basic tasks faster – like finding a phone number.  The iPhone was much faster.  This is the not so well kept secret of why Apple continues to do so well.  The phones just work and work well.  You don’t have to spend a lot of time tuning and managing settings like my neighbor does on Android.  This conversation really drove home a point though – the specs do matter to buyers.  As consumers we often buy on specs – more is better.

I’m no Apple fan boy.  I love the competition and I’m really hoping that Microsoft will get back into the game with their innovative approach with Windows Phone 8.  As for Apple, I’m watching the problems stack up with this latest release and I have real concerns that they erode Apple’s key competitive strength – the phones just work.  In particular, the problems with Maps are hard for me to understand.  At first, I thought that people were over-reacting to a few small issues, but it seems fairly wide-spread.  How does Apple – with all their focus on customer experience and quality – let this happen?  Is it indicative of greater problems as the company scales or problems stemming from the loss of Steve Jobs?  Stack this one with all the other reported issues and I get worried about their future.  If Apple doesn’t deliver the best quality and best experience, what are they?  It’s still early and there’s a lot of noise about the problems that makes it hard to tell how serious they really are.  When the dust settles we’ll have a better picture.

Lastly, in our Mobile Perspectives Study (pre-iOS6/iPhone 5) iOS users had a Net Promoter Score of 69 while Android users were at 27.  Further, iOS was 10 or more points higher in satisfaction when it came to performing 10 of 11 key tasks with the phone (like email, phone calls, voice mail, video, etc).  The only category where Android scored better was in Maps/Directions which makes sense given that Android has had turn by turn navigation.  It will be very interesting to see how the scores shift in the next survey.

What has been your experience?

Today the Wall Street Journal published a great article by Angus Loten about a critical issue in successfully building a small business – getting paid.  The article goes into great detail, but in a nut shell it says that companies are getting slower and slower when it comes to paying invoices.  Small businesses typically have to wait 45 days for payment and in the article, they give one example of a business that waited 404 days.  Over the years working at Intuit I spoke to thousands of small businesses and this was a frequent topic.  Very small businesses struggled to stay on top of paperwork and invoice promptly.  Once they did invoice, often companies wouldn’t pay on time and they had to remember to follow up (often several times) to get payment.

What the article doesn’t hit is that not only is slow payment a problem, bad debt is also a problem.  As a small company, you can expect that some percent of your invoices will never get paid.  This is a huge issue when you factor in the sunk cost in time, materials, payroll, and missed opportunities (customers you didn’t work for).

What really struck me when I read this article is that this issue never comes up when I talk to OnForce Pros… at least about the part of their business that they get from OnForce.  This is a problem that dates back to the invention of credit.  I love that the OnForce business model has solved this.  Here’s some data on how OnForce compares to the typical experience that the WSJ describes:

• Zero unpaid work orders! During the last few years of economic turmoil several of OnForce’s customers have gone out of business.  During that time not a single work order went unpaid due to lack of funds.
• Paid in 54 hours! Last check, on average, OnForce Pros get funds credited to their account 54 hours after they mark a job as complete.  That certainly beats 45 days or 404 days.
• 99.97% of work orders paid in 30 days! As of right now, we have about 1.2% of completed work orders that haven’t been paid within 5 days.  Looking out to 30 days, we have 0.035% of completed work orders not paid.  That’s less than 4 work orders for every 10,000 completed.  Each of these is actively monitored as we help the two parties work through the dispute.

We constantly hear stories in the press and on TV about small business lending and access to capital.  While this is a critical issue, imagine how much easier it would get if businesses weren’t investing funds up front to pay workers, buy materials, and do work, only to wait for weeks/months after completion to get the revenue associated with that outlay of capital.  Small business success will be critical to reviving our economy and cash flow is at the heart of how small businesses start, grow, and thrive.  I’m happy that we can help in the IT industry.

Related: ZDNet covers the OnForce index of economic confidence

Every morning I make tea, turn on the TV for news of the world, and I pop into Google Reader/Twitter/Google+ etc. to see what’s happening in tech.  This morning I came across an interesting article by Jason Hiner for TechRepublic and ZDNet.  In the article he talks about the huge IT build up in the 90′s, the dot com crash, and the current situation.  The thing that caught my eye is that he talks about the disruption of the traditional IT department and the resultant shift to independent consultants and outsourcing.  He says: “We’re going to see most of traditional IT administration and support functions outsourced to third-party consultants.”  At OnForce we see this trend in action every day and so I couldn’t agree more with the conclusion  However, I think Jason missed an opportunity to talk more about the advantages and challenges of the new model.  Change is opportunity, but it’s rarely easy.

Here are four key advantages of using independent contractors:

1. Pay for results, not time.  In field services, employees in large organizations generally average about 60% utilization – meaning that 40% of the cost of those employees is wasted.  With independent contractors you can structure agreements to pay for outcomes and not time… and even if you pay for time, you pay until the job is done, not for the gaps between jobs.  This is particularly important for businesses that have spikes in demand.  For example, the retail industry has a real spike in IT work over the summer to get ready for the holiday selling season.  If retail chains tried to handle this with internal staff, they would be faced with huge demand over a few months resulting in lots of overtime, extra hiring and training, or failing to fully execute.  The only practical way is to leverage independent contractors.
2. Geographic reach.  With improved collaboration tools, video conferencing, and an increasingly mobile workforce, businesses have more locations than ever before.  Whether that’s a result of acquisitions or a telecommuting plan it’s an IT challenge.  Using local, independent contractors eliminates the need to pay employees to sit in airplanes watching Harry Potter and eating peanuts.  One of our clients is in the business of providing medical devices in clinics and has hundreds of locations to serve.  It’s frightening to imagine the travel schedule for an IT team to cover that territory – and even more frightening to think about gas expenses.
3. Talent.  With technology changing so rapidly (Google+, tablets, smart phones…) it’s increasingly difficult for an IT team to maintain expertise in everything.  Specialization is increasingly important.  By using independent contractors you can hire the right person for each job.  Further, with the commoditization of some IT jobs, sometimes the best person for the job is the new grad just starting a consulting business and not the seasoned network engineer.  By using independent contractors and matching the right expert to the right job, you end up getting a higher success rate on the job, reducing follow-up calls, and you can avoid overpaying by selecting the right talent level.  Maybe the most important point about talent is that many of these independent contractors are real entrepreneurs and unbelievably skilled at what they do.  I’ve spent lots of time meeting OnForce independent contractors and I’ve met some really impressive people with serious expertise and impressive resumes… and not one of these people would ever willingly work for a corporation on an IT team.
4. Dealing with Economic Uncertainty.  Just this morning, the Boston Globe had a story about a business owner who is optimistic about his business, but unwilling to hire due to all the economic uncertainty – compounded by fears that we won’t reach an agreement about the debt ceiling.  We have been hearing variations on this theme throughout 2010 and 2011.  Businesses were burned by the economic crisis of 2008 and layoffs are still painful memories that no one wants to repeat.  Using independent contractors is a great way to allow your business to capture opportunities without committing to a high, fixed “burn rate” with lots of new employees, salaries, and health care costs.

And there are challenges when using independent contractors that don’t come up/aren’t as important with employees:

• Insurance:  Using an uninsured independent contractor makes you liable for whatever happens on the job.  Further, insurance is confusing.  Often, a contractor will say they have insurance, but it may not cover the work they will be doing for you or their own sub-contractors that they bring in.  The stakes are large.  When something happens on a $1,500 job (and eventually, it will) you may lose your business if you don’t have insurance coverage.
• Contracting:  You should make sure you have a clear legal agreement.  Managing and updating agreements across hundreds or thousands of independent contractors can be a nightmare.
• 1099s:  At the end of the year are you ready for a mountain of 1099s?  Also, be careful in preparing them.  The IRS is surprisingly efficient at doling out penalties for errors.
• Quality:  If you need a contractor to convert your office in Akron to VoIP phones, how do you find the right person/company to do the job?  How do you verify that they can do what they say they can do?
• Pricing:  So, what should you pay for the project in Akron?  How do you know what a fair price is?  You probably need to get three bids to find out what’s fair.  If you just get one bid, you expose yourself to paying too much.  Of course, you should also be careful about choosing just on price.  The cost of rework can undo any savings you might have hoped for.
• Management:  Once you have an agreement, how do you keep tabs on the project?

There are huge benefits to using independent contractors and significant challenges.  Visionary CIOs and service leaders are going in “eyes wide open,” addressing the challenges, and reaping the benefits.  I’m excited to be a part of bringing this new way of business to the main stream.

I’m going to be on the road over the next couple of weeks and I thought I would take the opportunity to make some appointments with people outside of my home territory.  If you’ve got something you want OnForce to hear, I’d love to meet with you!  Even if you don’t, I’d love to learn more about your business.

So, here’s my schedule for the next several weeks:

• San Francisco/San Jose area: Next Monday, April 18th afternoon/evening.  May have some slots Tuesday or Wednesday as well.
• Philladelphia: April 25th afternoon/evening
• Providence, RI: May 12th

Toby Metcalf has graciously agreed to help organize while I’m in the air.  If you’re interested in getting together, please send an email to Toby at toby.metcalf at onforce.com.  Be sure to let him know when you are available.  Depending on interest we’ll set a final time and place.

See you soon!
Bill Lucchini
Chief Operating Officer

After a great week of meetings in California I find myself sardined into a tiny seat in the back of a plane with six hours to spare until I make it back to a couple of feet of new snow in Boston.  It’s a great opportunity to write a blog post!

Pete, OnForce’s CEO, and I had a number of great meetings with partners and industry people, but I really enjoyed my meeting on Tuesday night with half a dozen OnForce Pros.  We met at one of my favorite places in Palo Alto, ironically named the “Old Pro”.  It’s a great sports bar with huge flat panels covering every wall and above the bar and, in an odd departure from the norm, a mechanical bull in the corner.  It was a great setting for a casual conversation over some excellent beers.  My only regret was that no one rode the bull.

The conversation covered lots of topics.  I got a chance to learn about everyone’s different approach to business from Gary who teaches two or three days per week and takes work orders in his spare time, to Justin who started out with OnForce way back in 2004 and has built quite a business to the point where he has several techs working for him.  I picked up new insights about the different ways people run their businesses, some good tips about ways we can improve OnForce, and one comment that really motivates me and the team.

We were talking about how all sorts of things happen when you’re doing on-site services, whether it’s showing up to a store front that’s closed, or finding a site contact that has expectations that have nothing to do with what’s on the work order. In the middle of that conversation, someone (maybe Justin?), said that he keeps coming back to OnForce because things just go smoother – that “it’s better with OnForce” were the exact words I think. Around the table I saw lots of nods and everyone seemed to agree. We spend all of our time thinking about how we can get better but it sure is nice when someone let’s you know that you’re doing pretty well.

Thanks to Austin, Gary, John, Justin, Brian, Rory, and Vince.  It was great of you to take some time out of your schedules to share your stories! Whenever I travel, I’ll try to set up something like this. It’s great to get to know everyone and always leaves me energized!

Bill
OnForce COO
bill.lucchini at onforce.com